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Books > Language & Literature > Language & linguistics > Semantics (meaning) > Pragmatics

Serial Verbs (Paperback): Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald Serial Verbs (Paperback)
Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald
R1,161 Discovery Miles 11 610 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

This book provides an in-depth typological account of the forms, functions, and histories of serial verb constructions. Serial verbs, in which several verbs combine to form a single predicate, describe what is conceptualized as a single event. The verbs in the construction have the same tense, aspect, mood, modality, and evidentiality values, cannot be negated or questioned separately, and usually share the same subject and object. They are a powerful means of portraying various facets of one event, and can express grammatical meanings such as aspect, direction, and causation, particularly in languages where few other means are available. In this volume, Alexandra Aikhenvald seeks to answer unresolved questions such as: What are the parameters of variation in serial verbs? How do serial verbs differ from other, superficially similar multi-verb constructions? How do serial verbs emerge, and what happens to them over time? What role do they play in the representation of event structure? The book uses an inductively-based framework for the analysis and draws on data from languages with different typological profiles and genetic affiliations. It will be of interest to researchers and students from a wide range of fields of linguistics, especially typology, anthropological linguistics, and language contact.

The Oxford Handbook of Grammatical Number (Hardcover): Patricia Cabredo Hofherr, Jenny Doetjes The Oxford Handbook of Grammatical Number (Hardcover)
Patricia Cabredo Hofherr, Jenny Doetjes
R5,513 Discovery Miles 55 130 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

This volume offers detailed accounts of current research in grammatical number in language. Following a detailed introduction, the chapters in the first three parts of the book explore the multiple research questions in the field and the complex problems surrounding the analysis of grammatical number: Part I presents the background and foundational notions, Part II the morphological, semantic, and syntactic aspects, and Part III the different means of expressing plurality in the event domain. The final part offers fifteen case studies that include in-depth discussion of grammatical number phenomena in a range of typologically diverse languages, written by - or in collaboration with - native speakers linguists or based on extensive fieldwork. The volume draws on work from a range of subdisciplines - including morphology, syntax, semantics, and psycholinguistics - and will be a valuable resource for students and scholars in all areas of theoretical, descriptive, and experimental linguistics.

Inquisitive Semantics (Hardcover): Ivano Ciardelli, Jeroen Groenendijk, Floris Roelofsen Inquisitive Semantics (Hardcover)
Ivano Ciardelli, Jeroen Groenendijk, Floris Roelofsen
R2,946 Discovery Miles 29 460 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. This book presents a new logical framework to capture the meaning of sentences in conversation. The traditional approach equates meaning with truth-conditions: to know the meaning of a sentence is to know under which circumstances it is true. The reason for this is that linguistic and philosophical investigations are usually carried out in a logical framework that was originally designed to characterize valid argumentation. However, argumentation is neither the sole, nor the primary function of language. One task that language more widely and ordinarily fulfils is to enable the exchange of information between conversational participants. In the framework outlined in this volume, inquisitive semantics, information exchange is seen as a process of raising and resolving issues. Inquisitive semantics provides a new formal notion of meaning, which makes it possible to model various concepts that are crucial for the analysis of linguistic information exchange in a more refined and more principled way than has been possible in previous frameworks. Importantly, it also allows an integrated treatment of statements and questions. The first part of the book presents the framework in detail, while the second demonstrates its benefits in the semantic analysis of questions, coordination, modals, conditionals, and intonation. The book will be of interest to researchers and students from advanced undergraduate level upwards in the fields of semantics, pragmatics, philosophy of language, and logic.

Modular Design of Grammar (Hardcover): I Wayan Arka, Ash Asudeh, Tracy Holloway King Modular Design of Grammar (Hardcover)
I Wayan Arka, Ash Asudeh, Tracy Holloway King
R3,596 Discovery Miles 35 960 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

This volume presents the latest research in linguistic modules and interfaces in Lexical-Functional Grammar (LFG). LFG has a highly modular design that models the linguistic system as a set of discreet submodules that include, among others, constituent structure, functional structure, argument structure, semantic structure, and prosodic structure; each module has its own coherent properties and is related to other modules by correspondence functions. Following a detailed introduction, Part I examines the nature of linguistic structures, interfaces, and representations in LFG's architecture and ontology. Parts II and III are concerned with problems, analyses, and generalizations associated with linguistic phenomena of long-standing theoretical significance, including agreement, reciprocals, possessives, reflexives, raising, subjecthood, and relativization, demonstrating how these phenomena can be naturally accounted for within LFG's modular architecture. Part IV explores issues of the synchronic and diachronic dynamics of syntactic categories in grammar, such as unlike category coordination, fuzzy categorial edges, and consequences of decategorialization, providing explicit LFG solutions to such problems, including those resulting from language change in progress. The final part re-examines and refines the precise representations and interfaces of syntax with morphology, semantics, and pragmatics to account for challenging facts such as suspended affixation, prosody in multiple question word interrogatives and information structure, anaphoric dependencies, and idioms. The volume draws on data from a range of typologically diverse languages, including Arabic, Chinese, Icelandic, Kelabit, Polish, and Urdu, and will be of interest not only to those working in LFG and related frameworks, but to all those working on linguistic interfaces from a variety of theoretical standpoints.

Expressive Meaning Across Linguistic Levels and Frameworks (Hardcover): Andreas Trotzke, Xavier Villalba Expressive Meaning Across Linguistic Levels and Frameworks (Hardcover)
Andreas Trotzke, Xavier Villalba
R3,021 Discovery Miles 30 210 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

This volume is the first to explore the formal linguistic expressions of emotions at different levels of linguistic complexity. Research on the language-emotion interface has to date concentrated primarily on the conceptual dimension of emotions as expressed via language, with semantic and pragmatic studies dominating the field. The chapters in this book, in contrast, bring together work from different linguistic frameworks: generative syntax, functional and usage-based linguistics, formal semantics and pragmatics, and experimental phonology. The volume contributes to the growing field of research that explores the interaction between linguistic expressions and the 'expressive dimension' of language, and will be of interest to linguists from a range of theoretical backgrounds who are interested in the language-emotion interface.

Semantic Singularities - Paradoxes of Reference, Predication, and Truth (Hardcover): Keith Simmons Semantic Singularities - Paradoxes of Reference, Predication, and Truth (Hardcover)
Keith Simmons
R2,351 Discovery Miles 23 510 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

This book aims to provide a solution to the semantic paradoxes. It argues for a unified solution to the paradoxes generated by our concepts of denotation, predicate extension, and truth. The solution makes two main claims. The first is that our semantic expressions 'denotes', 'extension' and 'true' are context-sensitive. The second, inspired by a brief, tantalizing remark of Goedel's, is that these expressions are significant everywhere except for certain singularities, in analogy with division by zero. A formal theory of singularities is presented and applied to a wide variety of versions of the definability paradoxes, Russell's paradox, and the Liar paradox. Keith Simmons argues that the singularity theory satisfies the following desiderata: it recognizes that the proper setting of the semantic paradoxes is natural language, not regimented formal languages; it minimizes any revision to our semantic concepts; it respects as far as possible Tarski's intuition that natural languages are universal; it responds adequately to the threat of revenge paradoxes; and it preserves classical logic and semantics. Simmons draws out the consequences of the singularity theory for deflationary views of our semantic concepts, and concludes that if we accept the singularity theory, we must reject deflationism.

Semantic Properties of Diagrams and Their Cognitive Potentials (Paperback): Atsushi Shimojima Semantic Properties of Diagrams and Their Cognitive Potentials (Paperback)
Atsushi Shimojima
R767 Discovery Miles 7 670 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

Why are diagrams sometimes so useful, facilitating our understanding and thinking, while at other times they can be unhelpful and even misleading? Drawing on a comprehensive survey of modern research in philosophy, logic, artificial intelligence, cognitive psychology, and graphic design, Semantic Properties of Diagrams and Their Cognitive Potentials reveals the systematic reasons for this dichotomy, showing that the cognitive functions of diagrams are rooted in the characteristic ways they carry information. In analyzing the logical mechanisms behind the relative efficacy of diagrammatic representation, Atsushi Shimojima provides deep insight into the crucial question: What makes a diagram a diagram?

The Routledge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition and Pragmatics (Hardcover): Naoko Taguchi The Routledge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition and Pragmatics (Hardcover)
Naoko Taguchi
R6,653 Discovery Miles 66 530 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

The Routledge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition and Pragmatics is a comprehensive critical survey of the field of L2 pragmatics, collecting a number of chapters that highlight the key theories, methods, pedagogies, and research findings throughout its development over the last four decades. Demonstrating the ways in which pragmatics has long served as a lens through which to examine patterns of L2 development, the volume is divided into six parts which reflect the field's structure and evolution: * Constructs and units of analysis * Theoretical approaches * Methodological approaches * Pedagogical approaches * Contexts and individual considerations * L2 pragmatics in the global era The handbook has a particular focus on covering not only traditional topics in the field, such as constructs of pragmatic competence (e.g., speech acts, implicature), teaching and assessment, and pragmatics learning in a study abroad program, but also emerging areas of study, including interactional pragmatics, intercultural pragmatics, usage-based approaches, corpus linguistics, and psycholinguistic experimentation. Each chapter introduces the topic and follows with a description of its theoretical underpinnings, an overview of existing literature, appraisal of current practice, concluding with a discussion of future directions for research and key readings. The Routledge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition and Pragmatics is an essential resource for those with an interest in second language acquisition, pragmatics, and language teaching.

Pragmatics - An Advanced Resource Book for Students (Paperback, 3rd Edition): Anne Wichmann, Karin Aijmer, Dawn. Archer Pragmatics - An Advanced Resource Book for Students (Paperback, 3rd Edition)
Anne Wichmann, Karin Aijmer, Dawn. Archer
R1,734 Discovery Miles 17 340 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

Routledge Applied Linguistics is a series of comprehensive textbooks, providing students and researchers with the support they need for advanced study in the core areas of English language and applied linguistics.

Each book in the series guides readers through three main sections, enabling them to explore and develop major themes within the discipline.

Section A: Introduction, establishes the key terms and concepts and extends readers’ techniques of analysis through practical application.

Section B: Extension, brings together influential articles, sets them in context, and discusses their contribution to the field.

Section C: Exploration, builds on knowledge gained in the first two sections, setting thoughtful tasks around further illustrative material. This enables readers to engage more actively with the subject matter and encourages them to develop their own research responses.

Throughout the book, topics are revisited, extended, interwoven and deconstructed, with the reader’s understanding strengthened by tasks and follow-up questions.

Pragmatics:

provides a broad view of pragmatics from a range of perspectives, gathering readings from key names in the discipline, including Geoffrey Leech, Michael McCarthy, Thomas Kohnen, Joan Manes and Nessa Wolfson

covers a wide variety of topics, including speech acts, pragmatic markers, implicature, research methods in pragmatics, facework and politeness, and prosody

examines the social and cultural contexts in which pragmatics occurs, such as in cross-cultural pragmatics (silence, indirectness, forms of address, cultural scripts) and pragmatics and power (the courtroom, police interaction, political interviews and doctor-patient communication)

uses a wide range of corpora to provide both illustrative examples and exploratory tasks

is supported by a companion website at www.routledge.com/cw/archer featuring extra activities and additional data for analysis, guidance on undertaking corpus analysis and research, including how to create your own corpus with CMC, and suggestions for further reading.

Written by experienced teachers and researchers in the field, Pragmatics provides an essential resource for students and researchers of applied linguistics.

Table of Contents

Section A: Introduction A1. The Origins of Pragmatics A2. Research Methods in Pragmatics A3. The Semantic-Pragmatic Interface A4. Speech Acts: Doing Things With Words A5. Implicature A6. Pragmatics and discourse A7. Pragmatic Markers A8. Pragmatics, Facework and Im/Politeness A9. Pragmatics, Prosody and Gesture A10. Cross-cultural pragmatics A11. Historical Pragmatics A12. Pragmatics and Power Section B: Extension B1. The Origins of Pragmatics. Readings: B Nerlich ,History of Pragmatics (2010). G. Leech, Principles of pragmatics (1983). B2. Research Methods in Pragmatics. Readings: G Kasper, Data collection in pragmatics research (2000). J.- van der Henst and D Sperber, Testing the cognitive and communicative principles of relevance (2004) T. Kohnen, Historical corpus pragmatics (2009) B3. The Semantic-Pragmatic Interface. Readings: K.M Jasczolt, Semantics-pragmatics interface (2010). R. Stalnaker, Pragmatic presuppositions (1974). N. J. Enfield, The definition of what d’you-call-it: semantics and pragmatics of recognitional deixis (2003) B4. Speech Acts: Doing Things With Words Readings: J. Manes and N. Wolfson ,The compliment formula (1981). A Jucker, Speech act research between armchair, field and laboratory. The case of compliments. (2009). M. Eisenstein and J. Bodman, Expressing gratitude in American English (1993) B5. Implicature Readings H.P. Grice, Logic and conversation (1989). G. Leech, Semantics: the study of meaning (1981). D. Wilson, Relevance Theory (2010). B6. Pragmatics and the Structure of discourse Readings: A. Tsui, English conversation (1994). M. Stubbs, Discourse analysis (1983). M. McCarthy, Talking back: "small" interactional response tokens in everyday conversation (2003) B7. Pragmatic Markers Readings: G. Diani, The discourse functions of I don’t know in English conversation (2004). G. Gilquin, Hesitation markers among EFL learners: pragmatic deficiency or difference? (2008). C. Ruhlemann, Conversation in context. A corpus-drive approach (2007). B8. Pragmatics, Facework and (im)politeness Readings: J. O’Driscoll, Brown and Levinson’s face- how it can and can’t help us to understand interaction across cultures (2007). R. Watts, Politeness (2003). J Culpeper, D. Bousfield and A. Wichmann, Impoliteness revisited: with special reference to dynamic and prosodic aspects (2003). B9. Prosody: Intonation Readings: I. Mennen, Phonological and phonetic influences in non-native intonation (2007). A Wichmann, The intonation of please-requests: a corpus based study (2004). C Gussenhoven, The phonology of tone and intonation (2004). B10. Cross-Cultural Communication Readings: A. Wierzbicka, Cross-cultural pragmatics (2003). J. Thomas, Cross-cultural pragmatic failure (1983). M Argyl, Bodily communication (1988) B11. Historical Pragmatics Readings: J. Culpeper, Historical pragmatics (2010). T. Kohnen, Historical corpus pragmatics (2009). I. Taavitsainen and A.H. Jucker, Methinks you seem more beautiful than ever (2008). B12. Analysing Power Readings: T. Van Dijk, Discourse, context and cognition (2006). S. Harris, Pragmatics and power (1995). K. Haworth, The dynamics of power and resistance in police interview discourse (2006). Section C: Exploration C1. Choosing, Transcribing and Annotating a Dataset C2. Exploring Routinised Speech Acts Using Corpora C3. Testing for Implicatures C4. The Organization of Discourse Structure C5. Pragmatic Markers: Further Explorations C6. Facework and Im/Politeness C7. Prosody and Non-Verbal communication C8. Cross-Cultural and Intercultural Pragmatics C9. Power. References

All Bullshit and Lies? - Insincerity, Irresponsibility, and the Judgment of Untruthfulness (Paperback): Chris Heffer All Bullshit and Lies? - Insincerity, Irresponsibility, and the Judgment of Untruthfulness (Paperback)
Chris Heffer
R925 Discovery Miles 9 250 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

In a postfactual world in which claims are often held to be true only to the extent that they confirm pre-existing or partisan beliefs, this book asks crucial questions: how can we identify the many forms of untruthfulness in discourse? How can we know when their use is ethically wrong? How can we judge untruthfulness in the messiness of situated discourse? Drawing on pragmatics, philosophy, psychology, and law, All Bullshit and Lies? develops a comprehensive framework for analyzing untruthful discourse in situated context. TRUST, or Trust-related Untruthfulness in Situated Text, sees untruthfulness as encompassing not only deliberate manipulations of what is believed to be true (the insincerity of withholding, misleading, and lying) but also the distortions that arise from an irresponsible attitude towards the truth (dogma, distortion, and bullshit). Chris Heffer discusses times when truth is not "in play," as in jokes or fiction, as well as instances when concealing the truth can achieve a greater good. The TRUST framework demonstrates that untruthfulness becomes unethical in discourse, though, when it unjustifiably breaches the trust an interlocutor invests in the speaker. In addition to the theoretical framework, this book provides a clear, practical heuristic for analyzing discursive untruthfulness and applies it to such cases of public discourse as the Brexit "battle bus," Trump's tweet about voter fraud, Blair and Bush's claims about weapons of mass destruction, and the multiple forms of untruthfulness associated with the Skripal poisoning case. In All Bullshit and Lies? Chris Heffer turns a critical eye to fundamental questions of truthfulness and trust in our society. This timely and interdisciplinary investigation of discourse provides readers a deeper theoretical understanding of untruthfulness in a postfactual world.

Irony and Sarcasm (Paperback): Roger Kreuz Irony and Sarcasm (Paperback)
Roger Kreuz
R361 R337 Discovery Miles 3 370 Save R24 (7%) Ships in 18 - 22 working days

A biography of two troublesome words. Isn't it ironic? Or is it? Never mind, I'm just being sarcastic (or am I?). Irony and sarcasm are two of the most misused, misapplied, and misunderstood words in our conversational lexicon. In this volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, psycholinguist Roger Kreuz offers an enlightening and concise overview of the life and times of these two terms, mapping their evolution from Greek philosophy and Roman rhetoric to modern literary criticism to emojis. Kreuz describes eight different ways that irony has been used through the centuries, proceeding from Socratic to dramatic to cosmic irony. He explains that verbal irony-irony as it is traditionally understood-refers to statements that mean something different (frequently the opposite) of what is literally intended, and defines sarcasm as a type of verbal irony. Kreuz outlines the prerequisites for irony and sarcasm (one of which is a shared frame of reference); clarifies what irony is not (coincidence, paradox, satire) and what it can be (among other things, a socially acceptable way to express hostility); recounts ways that people can signal their ironic intentions; and considers the difficulties of online irony. Finally, he wonders if, because irony refers to so many different phenomena, people may gradually stop using the word, with sarcasm taking over its verbal duties.

El conocimiento compartido (Spanish, Paperback): No Contributor El conocimiento compartido (Spanish, Paperback)
No Contributor
R683 R612 Discovery Miles 6 120 Save R71 (10%) Ships in 18 - 22 working days
How Gender Shapes the World (Paperback): Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald How Gender Shapes the World (Paperback)
Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald
R1,223 Discovery Miles 12 230 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

This is a book about the multi-faceted notion of gender. Gender differences form the basis for family life, patterns of socialization, distribution of tasks, and spheres of responsibilities. The way gender is articulated shapes the world of individuals, and of the societies they live in. Gender has three faces: Linguistic Gender-the original sense of 'gender'-is a feature of many languages and reflects the division of nouns into grammatical classes or genders (feminine, masculine,This is a book about the multi-faceted notion of gender. Gender differences form the basis for family life, patterns of socialization, distribution of tasks, and spheres of responsibilities. The way gender is articulated shapes the world of individuals, and of the societies they live in. Gender has three faces: Linguistic Gender-the original sense of 'gender'-is a feature of many languages and reflects the division of nouns into grammatical classes or genders (feminine, masculine, neuter, and so on); Natural Gender, or sex, refers to the division of animates into males and females; and Social Gender reflects the social implications and norms of being a man or a woman (or perhaps something else). Women and men may talk and behave differently, depending on conventions within the societies they live in, and their role in language maintenance can also vary. The book focuses on how gender in its many guises is reflected in human languages, how it features in myths and metaphors, and the role it plays in human cognition. Examples are drawn from all over the world, with a special focus on Aikhenvald's extensive fieldwork in Amazonia and New Guinea.

The Lexical Semantics of the Arabic Verb (Hardcover): Peter Glanville The Lexical Semantics of the Arabic Verb (Hardcover)
Peter Glanville
R3,291 Discovery Miles 32 910 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

This book is an investigation of Arabic derivational morphology that focuses on the relationship between verb meaning and linguistic form. Beginning with the ground form, the book offers a comprehensive analysis of the most common verb patterns of Arabic from a lexical semantic perspective. Peter Glanville explains why verbs with seemingly unrelated meanings share the same phonological shape, and analyses sets of words that contain the same consonantal root to arrive at a common abstraction. He uses both contemporary and historical data to explore the semantics of reflexivity, symmetry, causation, and repetition, and argues that the verb patterns of Arabic that express these phenomena have come about as the result of grammaticalization and analogical processes that are common cross-linguistically. The book adopts an approach to morphology in which rule-based derivation has created word patterns and consonantal roots, with the result that in some derivations roots may be extracted from a source word and plugged in to a pattern. It illustrates the semantic relationship between a source word and its derivative, while also offering evidence to support the view of the consonantal root as a morphological object. The volume will be a valuable resource for advanced undergraduate and graduate students of Arabic language and linguistics who are interested in understanding the verb patterns of Arabic, the derivational relationships between words, and the construction of meaning in the mind. It will also appeal to researchers and students in morphology, semantics, historical linguistics, and cognitive linguistics.

Speech Acts and Clause Types - English in a Cross-Linguistic Context (Hardcover): Peter Siemund Speech Acts and Clause Types - English in a Cross-Linguistic Context (Hardcover)
Peter Siemund
R3,891 Discovery Miles 38 910 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

This book is an introduction to the relationship between the morphosyntactic properties of sentences and their associated illocutionary forces or force potentials. The volume begins with several chapters dedicated to important theoretical and methodological issues, such as sentence and utterance meaning, illocutionary force, clause types, and cross-linguistic comparison. The bulk of the book is then composed of chapter-length case studies that systematically investigate typologically prominent clause types and their forces, such as declaratives and assertions, interrogatives and questions, and imperatives and commands. These case studies begin with an overview of the necessary theoretical foundations, followed by a discussion of the grammatical structures of English, and an assessment of the relevant cross-linguistic facts. Each chapter ends with a succinct summary of the most important findings, practice exercises, and recommendations for further reading and research. Overall, the book works towards developing a gradient model of clause types that goes substantially beyond the traditional distinction between major and minor clause types. It draws on insights from linguistics, philosophy, and sociology, and may be used as a textbook for undergraduate or graduate courses in semantics, pragmatics, and morphosyntax.

A User's Guide to Thought and Meaning (Hardcover): Ray Jackendoff A User's Guide to Thought and Meaning (Hardcover)
Ray Jackendoff
R544 Discovery Miles 5 440 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

Hailed as a "masterpiece" (Nature) and as "the most important book in the sciences of language to have appeared in many years" (Steven Pinker), Ray Jackendoff's Foundations of Language was widely acclaimed as a landmark work of scholarship that radically overturned our understanding of how language, the brain, and perception intermesh.
A User's Guide to Thought and Meaning is Jackendoff's most important book since his groundbreaking Foundations of Language. Written with an informality that belies the originality of its insights, it presents a radical new account of the relation between language, meaning, rationality, perception, consciousness, and thought, and, extraordinarily, does this in terms a non-specialist will grasp with ease. Jackendoff starts out by looking at languages and what the meanings of words and sentences actually do. Finding meanings to be more adaptive and complicated than they're commonly given credit for, he is led to some basic questions: how do we perceive and act in the world? How do we talk about it? And how can the collection of neurons in the brain give rise to conscious experience? He shows that the organization of language, thought, and perception does not look much like the way we experience things, and that only a small part of what the brain does is conscious. He concludes that thought and meaning must be almost completely unconscious. What we experience as rational conscious thought--which we prize as setting us apart from the animals--in fact rides on a foundation of unconscious intuition. Rationality amounts to intuition enhanced by language.
Ray Jackendoff's profound and arresting account will appeal to everyone interested in the workings of the mind, in how language links to the world, and in what understanding these means for the way we experience our lives.
Acclaim for Foundations of Language:
"A book that deserves to be read and reread by anyone seriously interested in the state of the art of research on language."
--American Scientist
"A dazzling combination of theory-building and factual integration. The result is a compelling new view of language and its place in the natural world."
--Steven Pinker, author of The Language of Instinct and Words and Rules
"A masterpiece. . . . The book deserves to be the reference point for all future theorizing about the language faculty and its interconnections."
--Frederick J. Newmeyer, past president of the Linguistic Society of America
"This book has the potential to reorient linguistics more decisively than any book since Syntactic Structures shook the discipline almost half a century ago."
--Robbins Burling, Language in Society

Pragmatic Aspects of Scalar Modifiers - The Semantics-Pragmatics Interface (Paperback): Osamu Sawada Pragmatic Aspects of Scalar Modifiers - The Semantics-Pragmatics Interface (Paperback)
Osamu Sawada
R1,455 Discovery Miles 14 550 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

This volume examines the meaning of scalar modifiers - expressions such as more than, a bit, and much - from the standpoint of the interface between semantics and pragmatics. In natural language, scalar expressions such as comparatives, intensifiers, and minimizers are used for measuring an object or event at a semantic level. However, cross-linguistically scalar modifiers can often be used to express a range of subjective feelings or discourse pragmatic information at the level of conventional implicature (CI). For example, in English more than anything can signal the degree of importance of the given utterance, and in Japanese the minimizer chotto 'a bit' can weaken the degree of imposition of the speech act. In this book, Osamu Sawada draws on data from Japanese and a range of other languages to explore the dual-use phenomenon of scalar modifiers: he claims that although semantic scalar meanings and CI scalar meanings are logically different, the relationship between the two makes it crucial to examine them both together. The volume provides a new perspective on the semantic-pragmatics interface, and will be of interest to researchers and students of Japanese linguistics, semantics and pragmatics, and theoretical linguistics more generally.

The Grammar of Copulas Across Languages (Hardcover): Maria J Arche, Antonio Fabregas, Rafael Marin The Grammar of Copulas Across Languages (Hardcover)
Maria J Arche, Antonio Fabregas, Rafael Marin
R3,370 Discovery Miles 33 700 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

This volume presents a crosslinguistic survey of the current theoretical debates around copular constructions from a generative perspective. Following an introduction to the main questions surrounding the analysis and categorization of copulas, the chapters address a range of key topics including the existence of more than one copular form in certain languages, the factors determining the presence or absence of a copula, and the morphology of copular forms. The team of expert contributors present new theoretical proposals regarding the formal mechanisms behind the behaviour and patterns observed in copulas in a wide range of typologically diverse languages, including Czech, French, Korean, and languages from the Dene and Bantu families. Their findings have implications beyond the study of copulas and shed more light on issues such as agreement relations, the nature of grammatical categories, and nominal predicates in syntax and semantics.

L'Adjectivite (French, Paperback): No Contributor L'Adjectivite (French, Paperback)
No Contributor
R1,077 R920 Discovery Miles 9 200 Save R157 (15%) Ships in 18 - 22 working days
Meaning in Language - An Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics (Paperback, 3rd Revised edition): Alan Cruse Meaning in Language - An Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics (Paperback, 3rd Revised edition)
Alan Cruse
R1,113 Discovery Miles 11 130 Ships in 9 - 17 working days

This book provides a comprehensive introduction to the ways in which meaning is conveyed in language, covering not only semantic matters but also topics normally considered to fall under pragmatics. Above all, the book displays and explains the richness and subtlety of meaning, with the aid of numerous examples and exercises throughout the text. Highly readable, written with style and wit, Meaning in Language is not bound to any particular theory, but provides explanations of theoretical approaches and perspectives as the context requires, with a stress throughout on the need for conceptual clarity.
The text and exercises in this third edition have been fully updated to take into account the most recent developments in the field and new chapters have been added, one on the semantics of prepositions and another on the semantics of derivational affixes.

Semantics and Morphosyntactic Variation - Qualities and the Grammar of Property Concepts (Paperback): Itamar Francez, Andrew... Semantics and Morphosyntactic Variation - Qualities and the Grammar of Property Concepts (Paperback)
Itamar Francez, Andrew Koontz-Garboden
R1,241 Discovery Miles 12 410 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. This book explores a key issue in linguistic theory, the systematic variation in form between semantic equivalents across languages. Two contrasting views of the role of lexical meaning in the analysis of such variation can be found in the literature: (i) uniformity, whereby lexical meaning is universal, and variation arises from idiosyncratic differences in the inventory and phonological shape of language-particular functional material, and (ii) transparency, whereby systematic variation in form arises from systematic variation in the meaning of basic lexical items. In this volume, Itamar Francez and Andrew Koontz-Garboden contrast these views as applied to the empirical domain of property concept sentences - sentences expressing adjectival predication and their translational equivalents across languages. They demonstrate that property concept sentences vary systematically between possessive and predicative form, and propose a transparentist analysis of this variation that links it to the lexical denotations of basic property concept lexemes. At the heart of the analysis are qualities: mass-like model theoretic objects that closely resemble scales. The authors contrast their transparentist analysis with uniformitarian alternatives, demonstrating its theoretical and empirical advantages. They then show that the proposed theory of qualities can account for interesting and novel observations in two central domains of grammatical theory: the theory of syntactic categories, and the theory of mass nouns. The overall results highlight the importance of the lexicon as a locus of generalizations about the limits of crosslinguistic variation. This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations.

The Semantics of Evidentials (Hardcover): Sarah E. Murray The Semantics of Evidentials (Hardcover)
Sarah E. Murray
R3,221 Discovery Miles 32 210 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

This book provides a compositional, truth-conditional, crosslinguistic semantics for evidentiality, the linguistic encoding of the source of information on which a statement is based. Central to the proposed theory is the distinction between what propositional content is at-issue and what content is not-at-issue. Evidentials contribute not-at-issue content, and can affect the level of commitment a sentence makes to the main proposition, contributed by sentential mood. In this volume, Sarah Murray builds on recent work in the formal semantics of evidentials and related phenomena, and proposes a semantics that does not appeal to separate dimensions of illocutionary meaning. Instead, she argues that all sentences make three contributions: at-issue content, not-at-issue content, and an illocutionary relation. At-issue content is presented and made available for subsequent anaphora, but is not directly added to the common ground; not-at-issue content directly updates the common ground; and the illocutionary relation uses the at-issue content to impose structure on the common ground, which, depending on the clause type, can trigger further updates. The analysis is supported by extensive empirical data from Cheyenne, drawn from the author's own fieldwork, as well as from English and a variety of other languages.

Mapping English Metaphor Through Time (Hardcover): Wendy Anderson, Ellen Bramwell, Carole Hough Mapping English Metaphor Through Time (Hardcover)
Wendy Anderson, Ellen Bramwell, Carole Hough
R3,444 Discovery Miles 34 440 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

This volume offers an empirical and diachronic investigation of the foundations and nature of metaphor in English. Metaphor is one of the hot topics in present-day linguistics, with a huge range of research focusing on the systematic connections between different concepts such as heat and anger (fuming, inflamed), sight and understanding (clear, see), or bodies and landscape (hill-foot, river-mouth). Until recently, the lack of a comprehensive data source made it difficult to obtain an overview of this phenomenon in any language, but this changed with the completion in 2009 of The Historical Thesaurus of English, the only historical thesaurus ever produced for any language. Chapters in this volume use this unique resource as a basis for case studies of semantic domains including Animals, Colour, Death, Fear, Food, Reading, and Theft, providing a significant step forward in the data-driven understanding of metaphor.

Use-Conditional Meaning - Studies in Multidimensional Semantics (Paperback): Daniel Gutzmann Use-Conditional Meaning - Studies in Multidimensional Semantics (Paperback)
Daniel Gutzmann
R1,730 Discovery Miles 17 300 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

This book seeks to bring together the pragmatic theory of 'meaning as use' with the traditional semantic approach that considers meaning in terms of truth conditions. Daniel Gutzmann adopts core ideas by the philosopher David Kaplan in assuming that the meaning of expressions such as oops or damn can be captured by giving the conditions under which they can be felicitously used. He develops a multidimensional approach to meaning, called hybrid semantics, that incorporates use conditions alongside truth conditions in a unified framework. This new system overcomes the empirical gaps and conceptual problems associated with previous multidimensional systems; it also lessens the burden on the compositional system by shifting restrictions on the combination of use-conditional expressions to the lexicon-semantics interface instead of building them directly into the combinatoric rules. The approach outlined in this book can capture the entire meaning of complex expressions, and also has natural applications in the analysis of sentence mood and modal particles in German, as Gutzmann's two detailed case studies demonstrate. The book will be a valuable resource for linguists working in the fields of semantics, pragmatics, and philosophy of language, as well as to philosophers and cognitive scientists with an interest in meaning in language.

Konstruktionsgrammatik Des Deutschen - Ein Sprachgebrauchsbezogener Ansatz (German, Paperback): Klaus Welke Konstruktionsgrammatik Des Deutschen - Ein Sprachgebrauchsbezogener Ansatz (German, Paperback)
Klaus Welke
R1,238 Discovery Miles 12 380 Ships in 18 - 22 working days
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